India, Tibet, and Nepal, hereafter referred
to as the “Indian subcontinent,” are countries which have held a certain
fascination for the West for centuries. Their ages-old civilisations and
cultures and the great wisdom which some of their members have possessed
have led many seekers after wisdom to travel there, in an attempt to receive
enlightenment. As we shall see, many who went to the subcontinent came
back with more than just wisdom.

This is not only the story of a geographic
area, it is the story of a duel for the fate of Humanity. It begins a very
long time ago and continues today. It involves forces beyond the comprehension
of ordinary men battling across time, desperate deeds done in darkness,
men of great valor and things of darkest evil. It may shock some of you,
but the story must be told.

In
the beginning....

Many centuries ago, beyond the reckoning
of humans, long before primates walked upright, perhaps even before life
crawled from the oceans, there was the awful Plateau of Leng. No one knows
how old it is; some have conjectured that it is eons old. Some archaeological
digs have produced evidence indicating its existence 35 million years ago,
when what is now the Indian sub-continent, having broken away from the
Gondwana land mass 165 million years before, made contact with Asia. The
meeting of the continental shelves of the Indian and Asian plates began
the rise of the Tibetan Plateau. But the Plateau of Leng survived this,
and possibly pre-existed it.

On this Plateau, in what is now Tibet,
awful things lived, and from this Plateau awful things have periodically
come to plague mankind. The early journalist Howard Phillips Lovecraft
has written about the Plateau of Leng and its extension the Plateau of
Tsang, and of the awful Tcho-Tcho dwarfs. What Lovecraft did not write
about, either because he was ignorant of it or because he feared the revelation
of a truth too terrible even for him to write of, was the one of the semi-human
rulers of the Plateau of Leng.

The writer and journalist Robert W. Chambers
was not so reticent, however, and in 1896 he wrote a lightly-fictionalised
account of the encounter between Barris, an American Secret Service agent,
and the ruler of the Plateau of Leng. Chambers, perhaps not wanting to
frighten the American public, altered some details, placing the ruler,
the dreadful sorcerer Yue-Laou, in China rather than Tibet. Likewise,
he obscured the truth of he conflict, which had Barris finally meeting
and dying at the hands of “Hark,” one of the agents of Yue-Laou. (Hark’s
story is told at greater length in MN’s “Secret
Wars” article.)

Yue-Laou, as Chambers wrote, had ruled
the Plateau of Leng for a long, long time. Chambers did not write that
Yue-Laou had ruled it since before the dawn of humanity, for the truth
that a powerful and inimical being who was in turn the agent of ageless
and horrible beings from the stars existed and was sponsoring attacks on
human civilisation would have sparked panics in America. But such, unfortunately,
was the truth. Yue-Laou, and the Plateau of Leng, are millions of years
old, and their masters untold billions of years old.

Nor is Yue-Laou the only agent of the Old
Ones who “lives” on the Plateau of Leng. The Old Ones who empowered Yue-Laou
and the inhabitants of the Plateau of Leng have many worshipers and agents
on Earth. One of the most powerful of these agents has been the group known
as the “Nine Unknown.” Under that name they came to the attention
of modern readers courtesy of the work of the journalist Talbot Mundy,
but the truth is that they existed before their battles with James Schuyler
Grim and survived his passing.

The Nine Unknown is an organization of
evil lamas given unnatural powers and greatly advanced science by the Old
Ones. The Nine Unknown use these powers to further the worship of
the Old Ones and to spread misery and chaos across the world. Some information
about them is already known, but much has only recently been revealed.
The truth is that their influence was much more widespread than previously
suspected, and that the Nine Unknown, directly and through their agents,
have been responsible for many of the woes that have beset mankind. The
roster of the Nine changes over time, with each new lama being given powers
by the Old Ones to replace the fallen or dead member(s) of the Nine. Unlike
Yue-Laou, they have not hid in the Plateau of Leng and had little contact
with the outside world; the Nine Unknown have been active on the part of
the forces they represent, and have bases and agents around the world.
The Nine suffer many defeats, but they always survive, only their agents
and lesser forces being destroyed. The Nine seem to believe that the Old
Ones they worship will eventually return to rule the Earth, and that patience
and endurance will see them through.

Luckily for mankind the universe is not
wholly hateful or uncaring. There are incredibly powerful beings in the
cosmos and on Earth who are capable of wiping out humanity with barely
a thought, but there are also Higher Beings who look out for mankind and
protect them.

One of those beings has, like Yue-Laou
and the Plateau of Leng, existed for millions of years, before humanity
began. Across the millennia he has fought for good, using his strange powers
to help mortal men and women. He has always been frustrating ambiguous
and coy about his origins, but he has dropped hints that he is a direct
representative of a Higher Power–perhaps even the Higher Power. In 14,000
BCE he went by the name of “John Gribardsun.” In 1908 he was called “Sunday.”
In the 1930s he was known as “Mr. Am,” and was a friend to the noted
industrialist Oliver “Daddy” Warbucks and his ward Annie. In the 25th century
he will call himself “Kevin Uxbridge.” His real name may never be known,
but there is evidence of his presence across time.

I believe–and I hope this article will
prove–that Mr. Am (as I will continue to call him, as I believe that is
his true name) is the leader of an organisation of good men and women who
are set against the Nine Unknown, their alien masters, and all they stand
for. These men and women had and have and will have exceptional powers
and greatly advanced technology, possibly courtesy of Mr. Am and possibly
derived from other sources. They make use of these abilities and science
in the war against the Nine Unknown. They have had many guises over the
centuries, but usually they are seen as lamas in various East Asian lamaseries.
This duel, between Mr. Am’s lamas and the Nine Unknown, has spanned centuries,
and much of what humanity holds dear exists only because of Mr. Am’s forces.
These forces, like those of Yue-Laou and the Nine Unknown, are spread around
the world, but they are concentrated in India, Tibet, and Nepal. Their
headquarters may be the legendary kingdom of Agartha, described by the
French traveler Saint-Yves d’Alveydre.